Security Measures in Payment Gateways

The boom of the e-commerce market in India has been so high that almost everyone buying products online are accustomed to the concept of payment gateway. An e-commerce payment gateway provides a secure platform to carry out the transaction process between the customer and the e-commerce website. You can either carry out the payment through your credit card, debit card or any other third party app.

The payment gateway is the crux of an online portal as most payment transactions happen online over a delivery mode like COD. Without a secure gateway, online websites cannot sell their goods or services, while customers cannot buy products without proceeding to a payment gateway.

Fear of fraud

The basic difference between buying a product from a local shop and buying online is a sense of trust. The chances of getting defraud while buying from a shop are minimal to zero, as compared to buying online. The common fears that are prevalent among customers are paying for a product online and never receiving it and risking our credit card/debit card details to a third party app.

Thankfully, the major players in the e-commerce business spend huge sums to maintain a robust framework so that we securely make transactions to buy products.

Let’s take a look at the security measures undertaken by these websites.

Security measures :

1. Data encryption

Data encryption is one of the most important security measures in the payment gateway. How does it work? When you enter your details in the payment gateway, it gets encrypted by using payment gateway public key and can only be decrypted by the payment gateway’s private key. Sounds hard to grasp? Consider this example.

When you are about to buy a product from an ‘X’ e-commerce’s app, and you click the credit card/debit card option, the app gives you ‘pay securely’ option, where you have ticked the box and as a result, the app saves the details so that the next you pay through the app, the process is sped up. This process is called encryption. The data can only be viewed by you and nobody else (unless somebody else views your phone). The data appears scrambled and illegible to anyone handling the server. This is known as decryption. It makes sure that your data is absolutely secured and even in case of a hack, your data appears illegible to the thieves in case they want to crack it.

2. Secure socket layer (SSL)

SSL is the standard security protocol used in online transactions which are practiced by all the major e-commerce websites. SSL establishes a link between a server and a browser. You enter the information on the browser and the information is taken by the server. SSL is also used for the authentication of the identity of the visiting customers and protects sensitive information like card details entered by customers.

While all the major e-commerce websites use SSL, the same cannot be said of the portals outside the list. So, it is advisable to the customers to only make transactions from websites with an SSL certificate. You can identify it by checking out the prefix ‘https’ at the start of the link and also look out for padlock symbol at the top left corner, adjacent to ‘https’.

3. Tokenization

Tokenization is a unique way of secure payment gateway, where the sensitive data like credit card/ debit card details are replaced with a string of illegible characters so that there is no risk associated with data breach. It secures the card’s data in the server and provides the customer with a unique token number that replaces the CC/DC details. Therefore, the next time the customer re-visits the website for a transaction, he can use the token number as a one-click payment.

These are some of the security measures used in payment gateways. If you are looking for online payment solutions practicing these security features, check out Easebuzz. It’s an online payment gateway in India that aims to make payment simple for businesses.

Life-cycle of Digital Payments for a Card Payment Gateway

The concept of digital payments was born out of convenience and control for consumers. It is only natural for this concept to be consumer-centric as in all markets the consumer is king. Today we will take a closer look at the complex process of digital transactions in a card payment gateway that make life so easy for us. The gateway is a piece of technology through which several merchants and platforms are able to connect from the website to their customers’ mobile devices.

Verification

Once on the other side of the payment gateway, vendors ensure the transaction and consumer behind the transaction is legitimate. Vendors verify details by matching shipping and card addresses, CVV code, blacklisting for credit card default, and IP address. These checkpoints are essential to protect merchants from unnecessary and avoidable costs.

Involvement of Banks

After all the verifications are made, payment requests are routed to the customer’s issuing bank and the merchant’s acquiring bank. Funds are exchanged between these two parties. The card payment gateway sends the initial transaction request to the merchant’s acquiring bank, in response to which this bank requests a payment from the customer’s bank via the payment gateway. When communicating with the customer’s bank, payment gateways run a series of fraud prevention measures. The message of a declined transaction is relayed by the gateway to the customer through the merchant and all in a matter of microseconds.

Settlements

If things have flowed smoothly till this point, the merchant sends a ‘settlement request’ which is a way of confirming their action of charging the customer’s issuing card.

Bill Splitting

Some payment gateways even have an option to divide funds between sellers and facilitating platforms and maintain individual ledgers to do so.

All digital payments through payment gateways follow this cycle. A card payment gateway that stands apart is one that is reliable, secure, scalable, and offer tech-support. Easebuzz is one such platform that enables quick and easy payments end-to-end for upcoming businesses across India.

Blockchain And Its Impact On The Payment Industry

Today everyone is talking about blockchain technology and a number of organisations are racing to harness the power of its many applications. Let us understand what this means.

A blockchain is a distributed ledger of transactions that are recorded chronologically. Blocks that make up a blockchain contain data related to the most recent transaction and a hashed reference to the previous block.

This hashed reference creates a link between all the blocks in the chain, and as no one technically ‘owns’ a blockchain, it makes it impossible for any single participant to corrupt it. This data is stored across the blockchain network which gives it its inherent security.

Blockchains can benefit international payments majorly due to the positive impact on speed, cost and security.

A payment gateway based on blockchain would enable payments to be sent anywhere in a period of 15 to 20 seconds. This is notably faster than routing payments through traditional banking routes which could take up to 3 days.

Using blockchain ecosystems as a base, payments are made more secure and less prone to attack compared to a traditional online payment gateway.

Security is a fundamental element that will drive mainstream acceptance of blockchain into the online payment industry.

Incorporating blockchain into a traditional payment gateway is not only beneficial to merchants with respect to decentralization but also for consumers as their confidence in online platforms will be imbued by this core security association with blockchains.

As of now, this ability to make business payments is an option restricted only to a few technology firms. Currently it is the financial service sector that has tapped into the potential of blockchain to change the way it functions.

Ultimately, businesses that want to streamline processes and make payments easy, secure and quicker should look to adopt blockchain technology.

Payment gateways in India are also looking into blockchain technology to further enhance the services they offer to their merchants.

The future of online payments demands adoption of blockchain in all businesses by seeking out payment service providers that will be able to help with access to blockchain.

This would be true for high-impact sectors such as multicurrency payments or international settlements where fewer traditional online payment gateways are present.